Welcome to the Piano World Piano ForumsOver 2 million posts about pianos, digital pianos, and all types of keyboard instruments
Join the World's Largest Community of Piano Lovers
(it's free)
It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!

In 1756, in Boston and other cities and towns, the coming of the American Revolution was speeded by mechanics, merchants, and artisans who organized against British tyranny. Calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, they set up committees of correspondence in the colonies to spread detailed news about British attacks on their liberties. They focused on the general search warrant, which allowed customs officers to invade and ransack their homes and offices at will.

In the spirit of the Sons of Liberty, on February 4 of this year, some 300 citizens of Northampton, Massachusetts, held a town meeting to organize ways to—as they put it—protect the residents of the town from the Bush-Ashcroft USA Patriot Act. On that night, the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee began a new American Revolution. Similar committees are organizing around the country.

Speakers at that town meeting were defying John Ashcroft, who threatened dissenters in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year. He denounced those "who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty. . . . Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies."

But speakers at the meeting emphasized that the USA Patriot Act and the the succession of unilateral Ashcroft-Bush orders that followed apply not only to noncitizens but also to Americans in that very hall. William Newman, director of the ACLU of Western Massachusetts, pointed out that law enforcement agencies are now permitted "the same access to your Internet use and to your e-mail use that they had to your telephone records"—and may overstep their authority. "The history of the FBI," Newman warned, "is that they will do exactly that."

Also speaking was University of Massachusetts professor Bill Strickland, whom I first met when he directed the Northern Student Movement during the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s. Said Strickland, "The elements of the Patriot Act place all of us in danger."

One result of that meeting was a petition, signed by over 1000 Northamptonites, urging the town government to approve a "resolution to defend the Bill of Rights." Thanks to a persistent organizing drive, that resolution passed the Northampton city council by a unanimous vote on May 2. It targets not only the USA Patriot Act but also all subsequent actions by Ashcroft and others that "threaten key rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens and noncitizens by the Bill of Rights and the Massachusetts Constitution."

Among those key rights: "freedom of speech, assembly, and privacy; the right to counsel and due process in judicial proceedings; and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures."

The city of Northampton officially asks, from now on, that "federal and state law enforcement report to the local Human Rights Commission all local investigations undertaken under aegis of the [USA Patriot] Act and Orders; and that the community's congressional representatives actively monitor the implementation of the Act and Orders, and work to repeal those sections found unconstitutional."

This is a signal to the mostly passive members of Congress that actual voters are watching them. In April, similar resolutions to defend the Bill of Rights from the Bush administration and from complicit members of Congress afraid to challenge Ashcroft were passed in the nearby towns of Amherst and Leverett. And Dr. Marty Nathan, of the ever industrious Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee, informs me that "the city councils of Ann Arbor and Berkeley passed civil liberties resolutions in January," as did the Denver city council in March and the city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 17. Other cities are also preparing resolutions.

You would think this grassroots movement to secure our liberties would be of interest to the national media, but I have seen little of it on television or in the print press.

To find out about these campaigns around the country, and about a range of organizing tools, you can visit the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee's Web site, and its links: www.gjf.org/NBORDC.

At the town meeting in Leverett, Massachusetts, Don Ogden, who initiated the resolution, noted—and I hope the FBI transmits this to John Ashcroft—that "it is truly Orwellian doublespeak to call such unpatriotic efforts a 'patriot act.' "

Like Northampton, the town of Amherst also passed its resolution unanimously. Select Board Person Anne Awad did not at all see Ashcroft's "phantoms of lost liberty," but rather a clear and present danger to our constitutional rights.

"As members of the Select Board," she said, "we want to know that all residents and visitors to our town feel safe. We do not want to support profiling of particular types of people. If one group is viewed suspiciously today, another group will be added to the list tomorrow."

A further indication that many Americans are ahead of their representatives in Washington in wanting to be safe from Ashcroft is an April 24 Associated Press report: "Despite the fear of future terrorist attacks, a majority of Americans are unwilling to give up civil liberties in exchange for national security, according to a Michigan State University study. Nearly 55 percent of 1488 people surveyed nationwide said they don't want to give up constitutional rights in the government's fight against terrorism. . . .

"The telephone survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, was conducted from November 14 through January 15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points." Sixty-six percent "opposed government monitoring of telephone and e-mail conversations."

The original Sons of Liberty were an instrumental cause of the American Revolution, and they spread the liberating news without an Internet. Think of how much more and swifter organizing can be done on the Web now. Let me know, at the Voice, what other towns and cities are doing to keep the Bill of Rights alive. Please do not use e-mail.

Originally posted by DT:I'm sure that should 10 people have disappeared mysteriouly after being visited by people driving plain cars, the media would be blasting us with the news.[/b]

Actually, they have been letting us know. Generalissimo Ashcroft though blasts the media as unpatriotic if they report it and refuses to give any information to them. De facto President Cheney publicly states in speeches that they had better be "very careful."

"Oh say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, o'er the land of the Free and the home of the Brave?"

It is still waving -- it is just a question of what type of country it still waves over.

No, you don't understand. We don't know that nobody has been taken away so we should be concerned. Just like we don't know that aliens from outer space aren't living amongst us so we should be looking.

_________________________
Better to light one small candle than to curse the %$@#! darkness.

Originally posted by JBryan:No, you don't understand. We don't know that nobody has been taken away so we should be concerned. Just like we don't know that aliens from outer space aren't living amongst us so we should be looking.[/b]

Not a parallel analogy, JBryan. No aliens have ever stated they have the right to live among us.

The Il Duce Regime, though, has made it very clear they have the right to set aside the legal rights of those they choose, using their own justification, to detain and then to handle all of these people secretly as they deem appropriate.

Now, perhaps they expressed such a controversial position without any intention of implementing their position. But somehow, I do not think they would have created a political controversy for nothing.

But then, this is the Fourth of July, so one should not be so unpatriotic as to criticize a politician about such a minor issue as civil liberties.

And, according to the Il Duce Regime and its many spokesmen, patriotism today is clearly support of the particular person holding the office, not support of the values of the country.

No george, what you are saying is that the Bush Administration through the Attorney General could be picking up and detaining ordinary citizens who have no connection to terrorism or, at least, that no such connection could be demonstrated, but we don't know that any such person has not been detained so we should be worried. My analogy is quite appropriate.

Yes, we would expect them to use the extraordinary powers they have declared to protect us from this extraordinary threat but only you and others like you have assumed that these powers will be abused.

Also, no, I will not take your bait (offered on a number of occasions now) and accuse you of being unpatriotic because you are skeptical of an administration we all know you oppose. That is your right and I would be the last to imply that you were being unpatriotic for excercising that right.

_________________________
Better to light one small candle than to curse the %$@#! darkness.

Originally posted by Larry:I don't think the fact that a bunch of leftists in radical college towns known for their goofy logic got together to protest something is all that informative.

[/b]

Larry and JBryan, are you disparaging people simply because of where they live and the image of that location in some people's minds? I thought you both found such attacks as offensive and bigoted (if I recall your comment correctly, Larry).

But then, maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe I need to look at things as you do -- if they agree with you, such an general attack is bigotry. If they don't -- well, we all know what THOSE[/b] people who live there think and we can easily dismiss them as irrelevant.

What, Ann Arbor and Berkeley? Aren't they the bedrock of Middle America? [/b]

Are you now telling me that Ann Arbor and Berkeley are not hot beds of leftist sentiment and that supporters of the current administration abound in these locales? You would look silly making that argument and you know it. THAT is all I was saying and is a whole lot different from what YOU said which was:

Quote:

The thing to do is take a look at the bottom of each post and see where they are from. Most (not all) come from the South or adjacent to it. This country has always recognzied that the South is the South. We accept it and deal with it. [/b]

Now when I have I ever made a point of you being from Massachusetts or the Northeast and attempted to dismiss you on that basis.

_________________________
Better to light one small candle than to curse the %$@#! darkness.

What, Ann Arbor and Berkeley? Aren't they the bedrock of Middle America? [/b]

Are you now telling me that Ann Arbor and Berkeley are not hot beds of leftist sentiment and that supporters of the current administration abound in these locales? You would look silly making that argument and you know it. THAT is all I was saying and is a whole lot different from what YOU said.[/b]

Are you now telling me the South is NOT a hot bed of conservative sentiment and that opponents of the current administration abound in that locale?

Sorry if I seemed to have edited my post after yours but my browser would not let me keep two copies open of Pianoworld and edit one without an error so I had to post the first part and edit it afterwards. You actually responded before I was finished.

_________________________
Better to light one small candle than to curse the %$@#! darkness.

"Guard against the postures of pretended patriotism." ~ George Washington

"Truth is great and will prevail... unless deprived of (its) natural weapons, free argument and debate." ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Let the history of the Federal Government instruct mankind that the mask of patriotism may be worn to conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people." ~ Benjamin Bache, 1798

"A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain." ~ Anatole France

"Why, of course the people don't want war ... That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along... That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." - Hermann Goering, Hitler's Deputy

"Criticism is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism - a higher form of patriotism...than the familiar ritual of national adulation. All of us have the responsibility to act upon the higher patriotism, which is to love our country less for what it is than for what we would like it to be." ~ William Fulbright, former senator from Arkansas

"In other hopeful news, mainstream columnists are beginning to report on the increasingly audible dissent within the U.S populace at large with the government's War on Terrorism . Check out this article that appeared last week, "A New Questioning of the War", by Washington Post writer, David Broder:

In other hopeful news, mainstream columnists are beginning to report on the increasingly audible dissent within the U.S populace at large with the government's War on Terrorism. [/b]

pique

Thanks for the quotes. Fascinating. I agree with you, those are what July 4th is really all about; it is not about knee jerk support for the adminstration in power as some sort of representative of what is great about America. Rather it is about support of the true values of America not the politicans and bureaucrats running things.

Re: the above quote. As seen from the President's dropping popularity and lots of anecdotal evidence, it is clear people have begun to analyze what is happening, rather than just being glad that something, anything, is happening. What will the Il Duce regime do as this grows? So far, when they have been questioned, they have gone on the attack and said the criticizer is unpatriotic. But they cannot do this as the people themselves become the critics.

I think we'll have asome clue how political Il Duce and his cohorts want to make this war by how his actions vis-a-vis Iraq parallel the November elections. My fear is that all will be ratched up to have an impact on the elections. At the least we will hear ever increasing saber rattling. But I fear we will find the building up of troops underway then, or even worse an attack being imminent or underway by late October/early November.

Cynical? Yes. But based on what I have seen to date, I have no reason to be otherwise. I hope I am wrong, though.

With regard to Iraq, anything short of a complete stand down by the Bush Administration will be characterized by the left as an attempt to influence the elections. I hope they proceed with vigor against Iraq for reasons other than elections.

BTW, Pique, those are all excellent quotes and, if you'll pardon the cliche, words to live by. We should all keep these thoughts in mind during these troubled times.

_________________________
Better to light one small candle than to curse the %$@#! darkness.